China may not be as isolated from the outside world as North Korea (see "The Land That Internet Forgot" on page 21), but for ordinary citizens information is still hard to come by. Nor can the Chinese information services industry be described as robust. In 1993, China reportedly had 60,000 information services businesses, with annual sales of $900 million dollars an average revenue of only about $15,000 per provider. Officially there were some 800 databases, but only about 300 were actually in operation, and just 60 of those were accessible by businesses and the public. (The rest are reserved for government use.) In terms of accessible databases, China has less than 1% of the world's total (for a nation with over 20% of the world's population). There is no government agency charged with responsibility for promoting the development of the Chinese information services industry.
In early October, the Chinese Economic Information Daily stirred up controversy by charging that "a penchant for secrecy, useless equipment and incompatible computers" had left China floundering in "information isolationism." The paper reported that the Chinese central government has 55 ministries, each having its own information center, and with no system of intercommunication between those centers. Nearly 70% of the official information produced in China is said to be stored in one or more of those centers, but as much as 90% of that data is considered "secret" and ends up in non-public government documents or moldering unused on dusty shelves. Only a small fraction of government-produced information is circulated freely to the public.
In spite of the dearth of available data, the Chinese government plans to initiate a "Golden Bridge" project to streamline the nation's telecommunications network. This project will establish an integrated, nationwide network of satellites, fiber-optic cable, and digital microwave lines, which is to form the backbone for China's data, image, and voice, transmissions by the year 2000. Seventeen trunk lines for this advanced telecommunications network are already in place, and another 22 are scheduled to be completed next year, according to China's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. There was no explanation, however, of what measures will be taken to help ordinary citizens or small businesses benefit from these advanced facilities.
Currently, China has 42 million telephone exchange lines (12 million of them installed within the past year). The Chinese government says that this will reach 140 million by the end of the century, enough to ensure that every family can have a telephone. -Wm. Auckerman
